'Thank you, Mr. Maddox.'
'Thank you. Uh, you were??'
'Opaline.'
'Opaline. Thank you, Opaline.'
Opaline, wrapped in a chartreuse silk peignoir, her white heels and beautiful shoulders flashing, walked out to dress. Owney rolled over, checked the clock. It was nearly 1:00 P. M.
He went into his bathroom and showered, then took his time dressing. He had no appointments today, the fourth day in the first week of the complete consolidation of his realm. Johnny Spanish and the lads were presumably still celebrating in some dive or other, on his tab, and he didn't begrudge them. All things considered, they had performed exactly as advertised.
Owney decided it would be a tweed day. He chose a Turnbull & Asser shirt in white linen cream and a red tie in the pattern of the 15th Welsh Fusiliers and, finally, a glorious heather suit from Tautz, the leading sporting tailor of the day. He finished with bespoke boots in rich mahogany. It took him some time to get everything just right, and finally, he enjoyed the construction. He looked like an English gendeman off for an afternoon's sporting. Possibly a partridge hunt, or a spot of trout fishing. He didn't shoot partridge and he'd never fished in his life, but in all, it was quite nice.
He walked into the living room.
'Ralph, I'll take my lunch on the patio, I think.'
'Yes sir, Mr. Maddox, sir.'
He went out, checked on his cooing birds, stroked one or two, attended to their feeding, then sat down. Ralph served him iced tea while the meal was being prepared.
'Telephone, Ralph.'
'Yes sir, Mr. Maddox, sir.'
He had one final i to dot. And the wonderful thing was: his worst enemy would dot it for him.
He reached into his wallet, and took out a note he'd received from the chief of detectives of the Hot Springs Police Department. It had a name and an address on it.
Earl Swagger 17 Fifth Street Camp Chaffee, Arkansas
The cowboy. The cowboy had somehow escaped, but the police had done what no one else had been able to do: they'd captured the cowboy. He was released today, and ordered out of Hot Springs. But that wasn't enough for Owney. He mistrusted men like the cowboy, for he knew that the cowboy's anger would grow, and that he would never be safe until the cowboy was eliminated. But now there was peace in Hot Springs, and everybody knew it was time for the killing to stop and stability and prosperity to resume. A deal had been reached.
But he knew someone who hated the cowboy even more than he did.
He picked up the phone.
He dialed long distance, and the operator placed the call for him, and he waited and waited as it rang and finally someone answered.
'Owney Maddox here. Ben? Is that you, Ben?'
'Mr. Maddox, Mr. Siegel isn't here. He's in Nevada.'
'Damn. I have some information for him. Information he wants very much.'
'Do you want to leave it with me?'
'Yes. It's a name and an address for an Arkansas party he's most interested in. It's?'
But suddenly Ralph was hovering.
'Yes, Ralph?'
'Sir, there's some men here.'
'Well, tell them to wait. I'm?'
'Sir, they's FBI. And Mr. Becker.'
'What?'
At that point, Fred Becker strode onto the patio, with four FBI agents and four uniformed state policemen.
Owney said, 'I'll call you back,' and hung up.
He rose.
'What the hell is this all about? Ralph, call my lawyer. Becker, you have no right to?'
'Mr. Maddox, my name is William Springs, special agent of the Little Rock office, Federal Bureau of Investigation. Sir, I have a warrant for your arrest.'
'What?'
'Sir, you own a painting by the French artist Georges Braque entitled Houses at LEstaque.'
'I do. Yes, I bought it from a legitimate?
'Sir, that painting was stolen in 1928 from the Musee D'Orange in Brussels. You are in receipt of stolen property which has been transported across state lines, which is a felony under federal statute 12.23–11. You are hereby remanded into custody and I am serving you with a search warrant for this property, for your office at the Southern Club, and for your warehouse complex in West Hot Springs, which agents and state policemen are currently raiding. Anything you say may be held against you. Sir, I am required to handcuff you. Boys'?he turned to his men?'rip this place up.'
The cuffs were snapped on Owney.
He shot a look at Becker, who looked back with a smirk.
'You've been ratted out, Owney,' said Becker. 'You have some nasty enemies in Los Angeles.'
'This is a two-bit fuckin' rap,' said Owney, devolving to Brooklynese, 'and you fuckin' know it, Becker! My lawyer'll have me outta stir in about two fuckin' minutes.'
'Yes, perhaps, but we intend to search very carefully and if we find one thing linking you to the Alcoa payroll robbery or any of twelve to fifteen murders in Hot Springs since 1931, when you arrived, I'll put you away for the rest of your life and you'll never see daylight again. Say goodbye to the good life, Owney.'
'Take him away, boys,' said the FBI agent.
As they led him away, Owney saw his beautiful apartment being ransacked.
Part Four
Pure Heat
Chapter 53
Earl drove west, leaving Hot Springs in the rearview mirror. The road ran through forest, though ahead he could see the sun setting. The police convoy followed him to the Garland County line, and stopped there as he passed into Montgomery toward places beyond.
He told himself he was all right. Really, he told himself, he was swell. He was alive. His child would be bom shordy. He had survived another war, an unwinnable one, as it turned out, but there was no changing things and there was nothing back there for him but probable death and guaranteed shame and humiliation.
I am not a goddamned avenging angel.
It is not up to me to avenge the dead.
I am not here to punish the evil.
I cannot go back to that town, one man alone, and take on a mob of professional gunmen, gangsters and crooked politicians.
My life is before me. I commemorate my dead by going on and having a good life.
He instructed himself in all these lessons hard as he was able, searching for a kind of numbness that would permit him to go on.
He tried to tell himself his wife and child needed him, this was over and finished.
